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Compare yourself to others

Orren. Photo: Robert Eldrim

Who the hell is ” Yourself”?

We all heard it when we were kids. Over and over again. “Don’t compare yourself to others, just be yourself!” And yet, few of us thought “Oh! Yourself! Wow! It’s that easy??”
That’s because they were all wrong.
You have to compare yourself to others to know who the hell yourself is. How else would you know? Short, fat, funny, generous, grumpy, hot tempered.. it’s all relative, right?

Same goes for an artist. Did you know that kids with guitars are still playing “Stairway To Heaven” and “Little Wing”? Same tunes we were all playing when we first started. After all these years, how could they not have found anything new? Well, maybe the point is to play the same old tunes. Guitarists find their own special style in the way they play that intro to “Little Wing”. Singers find the unique sound of their voice by the way their “Hello” stands out.
We all start off wanting to be like someone else. We compare ourselves and first we find only imperfections. But slowly, slowly we find something likeably in the way we can’t seem to resemble anyone else. (Orren, lead vocal, acoustic guitar, banjo)

2 thoughts on “Compare yourself to others”

I’m not surprised kids still play “Stairway to Heaven”, but what blew me away was one day a few years ago, I was helping a friend fix her fence. She lives very close to a high school stadium. The marching band was out practicing that afternoon — I was floored to hear them playing the same songs I played in high school marching band in 1974. While I was marching in the band only 3 years after “Stairway to Heaven” was released, I think those marching band songs were ancient back then. It’s amazing how some things never change.